Movie: Frontiere(s)

Frontière(s) embodies the elements of “new French horror” so well that one might be tempted to think that I extrapolated my theories from this film alone. Originally slated to appear in After Dark’s Horrorfest 2007, Frontière(s) was given an NC-17 by the MPAA and was given a limited release later. And while the gore isn’t more extreme than anything seen in Hostel (compare the two tendon-cutting scenes), its brutality and sheer intensity—particularly towards the final survivor, who has been so beaten and debased that she can hardly stand—brings more than a few cringe-inducing moments.

The set-up is achingly familiar—almost cliché: a group of youngsters on the run convene in a secluded inn only to discover horrific goings-on. And while it perhaps introduces too many elements (neo-Nazis, cannibals, mutants, torture, claustrophobia) to have the single-minded effectiveness of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Frontière(s) offers an explicit backdrop of the Parisian riots. The opening credits appear as televised images of rioters clashing with the police, with newscasters announcing the election of an extreme right-wing government (paging President Sarkozy). The image of the young rioters throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails highlights the underlying theme: the new generation versus an established quasi-fascist power. Even as the murderous von Geisler family decry integration (while mocking Farid, a Muslim), the youngsters show integration as a fait accompli. Yasmin (presumably Arabic and Muslim) is pregnant with Alex’s (a Caucasian) child. Farid calls Tom (another Caucasian) “brother.”

Director Xavier Gens capitalizes on the neo-Nazi imagery: in one particularly gruesome moment, a character is steamed alive in a chamber reminiscent of the gas chambers. Gilberte, the seductress of the family, has a creepy, sexualized air that calls to mind Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. The patriarch of the family wears black jackboots and gives fatherly lectures even as his victims lie writhing with shackles around their necks. He presides over his brood with an iron fist, and the yellow and orange color palette indicating chaos in the early scenes of Parisian riots return during a candle-lit “dinner” scene with the family.

Frontière(s) is most hopeful point in its insistence that evil—as expressed through intolerance—is a learned behavior. Just as the child-like Eva has not yet been corrupted by the von Geislers, so Yasmin attempts to spare her unborn child (which appears before the credits in ultrasound form) the fate of being inculcated into the family—or, by extension, the new right-wing government. Still, this hope is tempered by the final image: Yasmin, approaching the freedom and the border, only to be stopped by policemen who slowly reach for the guns as she approaches.

Welcome to the new world.

Movie: P2

One problem with having a solid, verifiable trend is that people—naturally—will try to cash in on it. In the wake of the J-Horror craze, how many Ringu rip-offs did we endure? After The Sixth Sense, how many movies had to have a mind-blowing twist ending (well, other than the ones the M. Night Shyamalan himself put out)? So when the producers of P2 receive top billing, you can almost hear the cash registers ringing in the background.

So even though Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur have their fingerprints all over the screenplay, it’s Franck Khalfoun (perhaps best known as “guy-with-axe-in-his-back” in High Tension) who has actually puts on the director's hat. And while the set-up of the film is brilliant—one woman, one psychopath, and an abandoned parking garage—the execution somehow didn’t hold up.

The film—essentially a folie à deux—therefore hinges on the two main characters. Both Angela, the victim, and Thomas, the psychopath, suffer from being woefully underwritten. Eager to get to the red stuff as quick as possible, Angela furrows her brow, calls her family (it’s Christmas eve), and frets—none of which really makes her endearing. Thomas has screaming fits and glares angrily at the camera, but none of this makes him threatening. He’s too busy chloroforming Angela and handcuffing her to tables to be a fully-formed character. Supposedly, his loneliness is the source of his madness, but this is something that’s announced (somewhat unconvincingly), rather than evinced. Imagine a movie in which you both fear and pity the protagonist… now how scary would that be? (Hint: think of Asami in Audition.)

It’s a pity, since the set-up of P2 had so much potential. Usually “trapped in a bad place” films take place in the countryside, where the entire locale has been steeped in cannibalistic hillbillies. But to have a common urban landscape become utterly defamiliarized… this is the stuff of nightmares. P2 also hints at some underlying class tension (Thomas might as well be singing “Uptown Girl”), but it dispenses any deeper examination with a character that might as well be wearing a sign that says “dead meat.” It's much too easy to kill yuppies; everyone secretly cheers. (And it's a nasty death, too; the scene drags the entire enterprise into sleazy territory. And of course you can’t have torture porn without a wince-worthy fingernail extraction or ocular damage scene.)

Aja and Levasseur still have a little ways to go before they can establish themselves as a reliable brand name in horror, à la Romero. They can craft some effective thrills, no doubt, but for P2, it feels like they punched a button, got a ticket, waited for the gate to go up, and then just finally drove away.

Movie: Them (Ils)

A second film which makes my grand, overreaching statements on French horror sound like blather? So be it. If anything, Them (Ils) has some elements of torture porn—namely, the torture part—the violence isn’t the centerpiece of the film. Instead, tension—pure, unadulterated—permeates every frame. Have Surround Sound? Good. There’s a recurring sound effect that's both familiar and mysterious; once its source is revealed, the sound moves from terrifying to deeply disturbing.

Ostensibly based on a true story, the film plays primarily on fears of displacement. First, the universal fear of being in a foreign place. Lucas and Clementine, the French couple, are already estranged from their Romanian surroundings. Although Clementine is a school teacher, she has difficulty with the language and is somewhat resentful of her students—in other words: normal. And if living in a large, cavernous home deep in the countryside weren’t enough, the film hints at a impossible, bureaucratic police department: either you’re put on hold until you’re dead, or you just don’t have the correct paperwork—and no less dead.

The second displacement is a more bourgeois, though no less effective: the fear of home invasion. And here is where the film works with brutal force. At first, the mysterious assailants simply frighten the couple: cutting off the power, turning the television on and off. But as the attacks grow more violent and begin to come from all directions, the safety of home becomes the inverse: the mechanisms used to keep the external world out (locks, shutters) are used against the couple, as their options for escape become increasingly limited.

The tension in the film never relents. Once night falls, the film hits its go-go-go stride, and the action doesn’t relent until daybreak (and not even then, really). The camera rarely stops to linger; instead, directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud keep things constantly in motion. Careful, judicious use of sound—primarily silence—provide much of the creepy, restless feeling: it's one thing to jump because of a loud noise on the soundtrack; it's another altogether to be feel the same nerve-wracking fear that the protagonists feel as they strain to hear something—anything.

The directors owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, the original home invasion nightmare (unless you count Lady in a Cage or Wait Until Dark—and why wouldn’t you?). Obviously, Them has none of the postmodern conceits of Funny Games, and the sadism is ratcheted down a notch. As well, the pacing differs: Funny Games excels in delivering long, excruciating suspense; Them, on the other hand, rarely gives you time to catch your breath. But films share, however, a bleak worldview. The motives of the attackers in both films is eerily similar, and while the identity of the omnipresent, hooded figures in Them isn’t revealed until later, the dual revelation of both the “who” and “why” provides a well-placed gut kick. Remember how I said that French horror films have placed their hope in the new generation? I may have to revise that…

Behind-The-Curve Trendwatch: France is the new Asia

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that you couldn't go into your local multiplex without running into a long-haired vengeance ghost with Japanese origins. The turn of the millennium belonged to the Japanese and their creepy, atmospheric (and sometimes gruesome) J-Horror. J-Horror, of course, bled into the nearby countries—most notably Korea—and finally came to the Americas, via a steady stream of remakes. But, as it happens when something becomes a culture meme, the market quickly got oversaturated, and Sadako became as much as a stereotype as any other boogeyman. Or, woman, as the case may be.

Meanwhile, French filmmakers have becoming increasingly visible in the genre. While French forays into horror have been spotty (though with a few classic examples), they roared into the consciousness with Alexandre Aja's High Tension (Haute Tension); now, French horror auteurs have become the enfants terribles of the genre.

It seems to me that this new thrust of extreme French horror has three major influences:

1) Torture porn. The obvious forerunner for the French taste for torture porn would be Takashi Miike's indelible (and still unsurpassed) Audition, and, to a lesser extent, Eli Roth's Hostel. Graphic violence, of course, has always been a secret pleasure of horror movies, but recent French directors have turned up the gore level to 11. And while this might not necessarily distinguish them from American directors who have done the same—torture porn itself is an American phenomenon (which has, thankfully, seemingly passed)—recent notable French horror films have been able to imbue their torture with cultural significance, stemming from

2) the French riots of 2005. If one believes that horror films are the culture's way of exorcising its demons, then this is the catalyst for the most recent explosion. After the accidental death of two teenagers in a Paris suburb, the Arab and African immigrant communities burst out in protest. (It certainly didn't help that then-Interior Minister and current-President Nicholas Sarkozy said that those neighborhoods should have been "cleansed with a power hose.") The anger and violence spread throughout France and continued for almost two weeks, until new police powers—including the banning of public gatherings—eased the pressure somewhat. But the racial underpinnings of the riots remain a definite subtext—if not an outright one—in the best of these films. Besides, racial tension is one of the key factors in

3) the changing demographics of France, particularly the Paris suburbs. Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine in 1995 was the first high-profile French film to address the "new generation" of Francophones. Since then, the view has only gotten increasingly bleak. On the upside, though, many of these new films—especially those depicting French youth—have consciously (perhaps self-consciously) introduced a racially and culturally mixed cast as a representation of France as it is today. Granted, most of that cast is offed in various gruesome ways... not to mention the whole violence and pessimism thing... but there does seem to be a distinct, if faint, note of hope towards the upcoming generation, even as the current one heads off towards its doom.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be taking a look at some of these French horror films, taking a look at some common themes and exploring why France is the new Asia. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.